Rav Meiselman publishes book on Torah & Science - Critique by Rabbi Slifkin

Ahead of the forthcoming book by Rav Meiselman, Rabbi Slikfin has put up  a series of posts and Rabbi Dovid Kornreich has responded. The book will soon be in the seforim stores and might be available from Yeshiva Toras Moshe

RNSlifkin: http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2013/11/anti-rationalist-mania.html

RDKornreich:   http://slifkinchallenge.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-job-made-easier-part-ii-problem-with.html

Should Parents be friends with their kids ?

guest post - Allan Katz    Vayeitzei 74

Lots of parenting articles and books admonish parents - Be a parent, don't be your kid's friend. And when I see this I recall the following Biblical sources usually cited when discussing the parent –child relationship.

In this week's Parasha-portion Genesis 31:46, we read how Jacob- Ya'akov instructs his BROTHERS to gather stones and form a mound. This mound was to be a monument and a witness to the treaty between and Laban and Jacob. The obvious question is that he had only one brother   Esau and he was not around. Rashi answers that Jacob referred to his sons as ' brothers' because they identified with his struggle and were committed to him. The relationship between Jacob and his sons could be described as an older brother-sibling relationship.

Further on in the Book of Genesis 45:8 , Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says that G-d has placed him as an Av= father to Pharaoh.  Rashi explains that the word Av=father as being a friend and a patron = from the Latin/greek  'pater'.  The word patron means a benefactor and protector.

Traditionally kids show respect to their parents by addressing them with the words my father- mother, my teacher. So from these sources the relationship could be described as one of an older brother, friend or mentor.

It is pretty obvious that a parent should not make her kid her confidant and burden her child emotionally with all her troubles and that she doesn't share everything. But being a friend of your kid helps the parent to be a ' real, genuine   and authentic person'.  Alfie Kohn  reminds us that your child needs a human being – flawed, caring and vulnerable – more than he or she needs someone pretending to be a crisply competent Perfect Parent. If parents don't share with kids things they enjoy or hate, or their needs that they have, kids will never be able to empathy with parents, and see that they are real people who also have needs. Real people are not perfect, screw up and make mistakes. Apologizing to kids not only models how that should be done, but shows that it is possible to acknowledge to ourselves and others that we make mistakes and that things are sometimes our fault, without  losing face or feeling hopelessly inadequate. But apologizing exposes our fallibility and vulnerability and makes us feel a little unsafe when we stand on the perfect parent pedestal, a position of ultimate and unquestionable authority. Even saying thank you to your child in a sincere and genuine way, that without their help you would have been lost exposes your vulnerability. There is nothing to fear because it is when we expose our vulnerability, we create connection and facilitate learning   opportunities.  Brene Brown teaches that it is vulnerability that creates great business leaders and when you shut off vulnerability, you shut off opportunity. If vulnerability is good for business leaders, how much more is it so for parents!

Another reason why parents fear developing a genuine and warm relationship with kids is that it will compromise their ability to set limits , impose their authority and control them.

In fact the opposite is true. Do you ever wonder why parents and teachers are the last to know when kids screw up or act in an inappropriate way? When kids feel that they are unconditionally accepted and loved by their parents for who they are , and trust them to be their guides and help, kids will come to parents for help. It is our healthy attachments with kids that allow us to be their guides and mentors.

We can set limits in a unilateral way and demand compliance or we can let kids participate in setting limits using the CPS – collaborative problem solving approach. When our concerns and expectations are addressed by the agreed solutions, we are in fact setting a limit together with the child.

As parents and educators we really want our kids to learn to set limits.Instead of giving a list of rules and consequences we can offer them principles and guidelines to help them navigate the world. We want kids to derive limits and guidelines on how to act from the situation itself and what other people need .If so, then our coming up with limits, and especially specific behavioral limits and imposing them on kids makes it less likely that kids will become moral people who say that the situation decrees a kind of a boundary for appropriate ways to act.

Parents should be friends with their kids, but it is not a friendship of equals but similar to the trust, respect and caring that a mentor shows for his student.

Barbara Coloroso was once asked to help parents with their young teenager. When he was a pre-teen he was such a good kid, he always listened to us. Now he no longer listens to us, just to his teenage friends. She answered the parents that nothing has changed – he used to listen to you, now he is listening to them. When a parent is a friend and a mentor the child is not being compliant but self determined and acts in an autonomous way giving expression to the values he acquired from parents and teachers and has made his own.

Associate of Beit Shemesh mayor arrested in voter fraud case

Kikar Shabbat (Hebrew)   Times of Israel   An associate of the mayor of Beit Shemesh was arrested last week and remains in police custody over suspicions of involvement in voter fraud in last month’s contested municipal elections.[...]

The police’s Lahav 443 special investigations unit began an examination of the allegations after police found 160 identity cards in an apartment and in a car in the city.

Investigators suspect that Shaya Brand, an associate of Mayor Moshe Abutbul, organized a plan to identify nonvoters and pay them for their identity cards, so that Abutbul supporters could use them to cast fraudulent votes, police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said.

Abutbul won the election over challenger Eli Cohen by less than 1,000 votes. [...]

Dwindling Conservative and Reform temples turn to the Orthodox

Times of Israel    Marla Topp of Temple Judea Mizpah in Skokie, Ill., doesn’t need survey data to tell her that Reform Judaism is in decline and Orthodox Judaism is growing. 

She has to look no further than her own synagogue.

 

A couple of months ago, the temple began renting out unused classroom space to an Orthodox school that had outgrown its building. Now its classrooms serve as a satellite location for the Arie Crown Hebrew Day School’s early childhood program.

The Orthodox preschool isn’t the temple’s first tenant. Once a flourishing suburban Chicago shul of 500 families, Judea Mizpah has seen its membership fall to 180 families, and the temple began renting out vacant space more than a decade ago, according to Topp, the executive director. The average Friday night service — the synagogue’s best attended — usually draws 50 to 100 worshipers. In September, the religious school scaled back from two days a week to one.

“As the demographics of our area have changed, our membership has shrunk and we needed to find revenue to keep going,” Topp told JTA. “Young families affiliated with the Reform movement are fewer and farther between.”

Throughout the country, a growing number of Reform and Conservative synagogues find themselves in similar situations.

This year, the Reform Temple Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y., began renting space to a new low-budget Orthodox day school, Westchester Torah Academy. Three years ago, Beth El Congregation in Phoenix, Ariz., began renting space to Torah Day School, a strictly Orthodox school that separates boys and girls beginning in kindergarten. Hollis Hills Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue in Queens, N.Y., leases space to an Orthodox school called Yeshiva Primary.

While not new, the trend appears to be gaining steam as a growing number of Reform and Conservative synagogues find themselves with dwindling constituencies, declining membership income and excess space, and as Orthodox institutions seek more room to accommodate their growth. [...]

Avreich who voted for Rav Sternbuch - allegedly kicked out of Rav Weiss' kollel

Behedray Chareidim   Light at the end of the tunnel of the complex and complicated saga which has been called by all the 'Golovenzitz compound affair'.

A decisive and overwhelming majority of purchasers of the 'Givat Yerushalayim' union, which belonged to Rabbi Avraham Slonim, voted to oversee the project with excavations by the Eretz Hachaim Association, under the presidency of the Av Beis Din of the Eida Hareidis Hagaon Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch. Thereby they expressed an overwhelming opposition to the intervention of Atra Kadisha. 

In addition, the housing activist Rabbi Yitzchak Firer gained the public's trust and was elected to lead the buyers' committee, over the Atra Kadisha representative, Rabbi Meir Grenimann, who applied for candidacy and suffered a great defeat.  [...]

"The representative of the Gab"d criticized in Hapeles the dismissal of avreichim' 

Not only the Litvaks threaten to dismiss avreichim who did not listen to Gedolei Torah in the last elections. One avreich (name withheld) who was among the buyers and is learning in a kollel of the Gab"d in Jerusalem, was asked by the Gab"d for whom he voted in the elections during the meeting. When he 'confessed' that he voted for Rabbi Firer and for supervision of Eretz Hachaim under the Rab"d, the kollel management ordered the avreich to leave the kollel and informed him of his expulsion from its ranks.

"This behavior is very surprising," the board buyers wonders, "Rabbi Avraham Froelich, a representative of the Gab"D for Meiron published a letter this weekend in 'Hapeles', in which he criticized the removal of avreichim from kollels following the elections. "It is not worthy to take disciplinary action against Lomdei Torah and to remove them from yeshivos and kollelim, just because that listened to their rabbis," said Froelich. I wonder what his reaction would be in light of the above story.

Rav Shmuel Auerbach's people file formal complaint with election committee about threats and coercion

Kikar Shabbat

הקרע הליטאי: היום (ראשון), הגישו נציגי 'בני תורה' תלונה ליו"ר ועדת הבחירות המרכזית לבחירות המונציפאליות שופט בית המשפט העליון סלים ג'ובראן, בגין היוזמה להחתים אברכים על כפיפות לגדולי הדור.  

השופט ג'ובראן הוציא צו המורה להשיב לעתירה וכן מבקש את התייחסות היועץ המשפטי לממשלה לנושא.

העתירה הוגשה ע"י עו"ד איתן וארי הברמן, המייצגים את תנועת 'בני תורה', והינה כנגד שבעה מנהלי מוסדות וכוללים שהחליטו לפטר אברכים בשל אופן הצבעתם בבחירות.

בין המוסדות ניתן למנות את רשת הכוללים יישכר באוהליך, ישיבת עטרת שלמה, כולל פוניבז' ועמותת שערי הרמה.

לעתירה מצורף גם כתב החרטה וההתחייבות שפורסם ב'כיכר השבת', ובו נדרשו האברכים לחתום על הבעת חרטה בגין אופן ההצבעה, וכן להצהיר על החרמת עיתון הפלס.

Rav Sternbuch: Bishul akum based on Jewish status on Israeli i.d. card

Rav Sternbuch (Teshuvos v'Hanhagos 5:252): Question: You write that you eat in a restaurant with a hechsher of the local rabbinut - but only for pareve items which have no problem of prohibited food mixed in. Your claim that you have verified that in your location they are careful not to have bishul akum. You say that you take teruma and maaser yourself and you don't eat foods that require careful examination for worms and other things. Answer: I am surprised by what you write. Don't you know that the rabbinut relies entirely on the Israeli identity card to determine if a person is a Jew regarding bishul akum? This is problematic since there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli's who came from Russia and the Israeli government considers them Jewish based on an invalid conversion since it is know that they were not committed to keep the mitzvos when they converted. Or they are given a Jewish status simply because it was claimed that someone in the family was Jewish. It is sufficient for the Israel government that someone claims that a grandmother lit Shabbos candles or they are taught to lie and simply claim that they are Jews. Others have forged certificates that they obtained in Russia. In addition there are immigrants from all over Europe who received the right to immigrant according to the Law of Return based on questionable status as Jews or converts. Then there are 150,000 Ethiopians that the Chief Rabbi declared to be Jewish without conversion when in fact we regard them as non-Jew or at least possible non-Jews.  Nevertheless all of these problematic cases have Israeli identity cards saying that they are Jews. In addition they rely on poskim that say that Shabbos violators do not have a problem of bishul akum, while major achronim state that they do in fact have a problem of bishul akum....There are other problem such as the view of the Chazon Ish that food produced in the factory of a non-Jews or someone who is not observant is prohibited because of bishul akum. The Shulchan Aruch and Gra rule that even if a Jew lights the fire, but if a non-Jew puts the pots on the fire – it is prohibited because of bishul akum. In particular in our case where the restaurant it owned by Shabbos violators who have the status of non-Jews and thus it is like the house of a non-Jew and therefore it is not sufficient that the mashgiach lights the fire.... We see clearly that there are many halachic concerns. In addition there is the view of the Taz mentioned in the Darchei Moshe that it is prohibited to eat even permitted food from a problematic Jew because he might feed you something which is prohibited... Thus we should avoid eating in such restaurants. A person who avoids sin even in private is called someone who sanctifies G-d's name. This is explicit in the Rambam (Hilchos De'os 5:10), All those who avoid sin or do a mitzva – not because that is the way of the world and not because of fear or awe or desire for honor – but for the sake of G‑d as Yosef avoided being with his master's wife – this is kiddush HaShem. Consequently from now on you should avoid eating in that type of restaurant or similar situations. In particular because when people see you eating there they will assume that there is nothing wrong to eat there and thus you will lead others astray.

The short comings of Scientism

Scientific American    [...] I’m struck once again by all the “breakthroughs” and “revolutions” that have failed to live up to their hype: string theory and other supposed “theories of everything,” self-organized criticality and other theories of complexity, anti-angiogenesis drugs and other potential “cures” for cancer, drugs that can make depressed patients “better than well,” “genes for” alcoholism, homosexuality, high IQ and schizophrenia. [...]

Arguably the biggest meta-story in science over the last few years—and one that caught me by surprise–is that much of the peer-reviewed scientific literature is rotten. A pioneer in exposing this vast problem is the Stanford statistician John Ioannidis, whose blockbuster 2005 paper in PLOS Medicine presented evidence that “most current published research findings are false.”

Discussing his findings in Scientific American two years ago, Ioannidis writes: “False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine.”

In his recent defense of scientism (which I criticized on this blog), Steven Pinker lauds science’s capacity for overcoming bias and other human failings and correcting mistakes. But the work of Ioannidis and others shows that this capacity is greatly overrated.

“Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong,” The Economist states in its recent cover story “How Science Goes Wrong.” “But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think.” [...]

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Time Magazine    A moral crusade to rescue oppressed Muslim women from their cultures and their religion has swept the public sphere, dissolving distinctions between conservatives and liberals, sexists and feminists. The crusade has justified all manner of intervention from the legal to the military, the humanitarian to the sartorial. But it has also reduced Muslim women to a stereotyped singularity, plastering a handy cultural icon over much more complicated historical and political dynamics.

As an anthropologist who has spent decades doing research on and with women in different communities in the Middle East, I have found myself increasingly troubled by our obsession with Muslim women. Ever since 2001, when defending the rights of Muslim women was offered as a rationale for military intervention in Afghanistan, I have been trying to reconcile what I know from experience about individual women’s lives, and what I know as a student of the history of women and of feminism in different parts of the Muslim world, with the stock images of Muslim women that bombard us here in the West. Over the past decade, from the girls and women like Nujood Ali, whose best-selling memoir I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced was co-written, like so many of the others, by a Western journalist, to Malala Yousafzai, they have been portrayed as victims of the veil, forced marriage, honor crimes or violent abuse. They are presented as having a deficit of rights because of Islam. But they don’t always behave the way we expect them to, nor should they.

Take the veil, for example. We were surprised when many women in Afghanistan didn’t take them off after being “liberated,” seeing as they had become such symbols of oppression in the West. But we were confusing veiling with a lack of agency. What most of us didn’t know is that 30 years ago the anthropologist Hanna Papanek described the burqa as “portable seclusion” and noted that many women saw it as a liberating invention because it enabled them to move out of segregated living spaces while still observing the requirements of separating and protecting women from unrelated men. People all over the globe, including Americans, wear the appropriate form of dress for their socially shared standards, religious beliefs and moral ideals. If we think that U.S. women live in a world of choice regarding clothing, we need to look no further than our own codes of dress and the often constricting tyrannies of fashion.

As for Malala, she was subjected to horrible violence by the Taliban, but education for girls and Islam are not at odds, as was suggested when atheist Sam Harris praised Malala for standing up to the “misogyny of traditional Islam.” Across the Muslim world girls have even been going to state schools for generations. In Pakistan, poverty and political instability undermine girls’ schooling, but also that of boys. Yet in urban areas, girls finish high school at rates close to those of young men, and they are only fractionally less likely to pursue higher education. In many Arab countries, and in Iran, more women are in university than men. In Egypt, women make up a bigger percentage of engineering and medical faculties than women do in the U.S. [...]

New Lebovits Revelation As Retrial Nears

Jewish Week    A “notorious” alleged chasidic sex abuser, who was sentenced to up to 32 years in jail but got that verdict overturned because of a prosecution violation, has all but admitted on tape to sexually abusing the young man who testified against him, The Jewish Week has learned.

The tape, according to police documents, was made under the supervision of NYPD Det. Steve Litwin in September 2008 and captures a secretly recorded conversation between Baruch Lebovits and one of his alleged victims. The tape was translated from the Yiddish — both apparently informally and by a certified translator — into English for the prosecution.

It was not, however, introduced at Lebovits’ 2010 trial. (Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has pledged to retry Lebovits and his next court date is scheduled for Nov. 19.)

Multiple e-mails to Hynes’ spokespeople seeking an explanation for why the tape was not used at trial, and whether it will be used in the upcoming retrial, were not answered.

During the recorded conversation, a transcript of which was obtained by The Jewish Week, the victim alerts Lebovits to the fact that others, including someone in Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s office, had heard that something “happened between us.” [...]

And along with these setbacks was the arrest in 2011 of Sam Kellner, the father of the third alleged Lebovits victim (the misdemeanor case). Kellner was indicted a year after Lebovits’ conviction and charged with having attempted to use emissaries to extort the Lebovits family and paying the witness who dropped out of the case to fabricate his charges against Lebovits.

In a series of articles over the past year, The Jewish Week has highlighted the numerous weaknesses in the district attorney’s case against Kellner, including credible evidence that Kellner was framed in order to cast doubt on Lebovits’ conviction. (Kellner’s trial, which has been postponed several times by the district attorney in what Kellner’s lawyers have characterized as a strategy to delay the case past Tuesday’s general election for district attorney, is set for Nov. 12.) [...]

Mendel Tevel - alleged pedophile arrested in L.A. - awaiting extradition to New York

CBS News    A rabbi facing child sex-abuse charges in Brooklyn is awaiting extradition back to New York after being arrested in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Menachem Tewel, 30, who also goes by Mendel Tevel, was arrested Tuesday at the JEM Center, a Jewish youth community center on Santa Monica Boulevard, police said.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office put out a warrant for his arrest for several counts of criminal sex acts with minors.

Police said he abused four boys between the ages of 6 and 14. A watchdog group that focuses on child abuse prevention said the alleged attacks happened in Brooklyn sometime between 1995 and 2004.

All of the alleged victims are now adults. Tewel himself would only have been about 12 in 1995.

“Mendel Tevel has been accused by many people of being a molester,” said Ilanit Gluckosky with Jewish Community Watch.

Dana Cole, a lawyer for the community center in California where Tewel was arrested, said the alleged crimes happened only in New York.

“No child, no parent, no one has alleged anything against the JEM Center,” Cole said. ”This involves activities that occurred several years ago in New York City.” [...]

G-d exists! Scientists claim proof found in Godel's theorem

Epoch Times   Two scientists believe that they have proven that God exists.

Analyzing a theorem from the late Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel with a Macbook has proven that God exists, say the two scientists–Christoph Benzmüller of Berlin’s Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna.

Gödel’s theorem is based on modal logic, a type of formal logic that, narrowly defined, involves the use of the expressions “necessarily” and “possibly,” according to Stanford University.

The theorem says that God, or a supreme being, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.

Paleo and Benzmüller say that they have proven that the theorem is correct, at least on a mathematical level.

In their initial submission on a research server, “Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel’s Proof of God’s Existence,” the pair so that “Goedel’s ontological proof has been analysed for the first-time with an unprecedent degree of detail and formality with the help of higher-order theorem provers.”

They add: “The following has been done (and in this order): A detailed natural deduction proof. A formalization of the axioms, definitions and theorems in the TPTP THF syntax. Automatic verification of the consistency of the axioms and definitions with Nitpick. Automatic demonstration of the theorems with the provers LEO-II and Satallax. A step-by-step formalization using the Coq proof assistant. A formalization using the Isabelle proof assistant, where the theorems (and some additional lemmata) have been automated with Sledgehammer and Metis.”[...]

SABJE (South African Board of Jewish Education) issues an apology OVER THIRTY YEARS LATER for sex abuse

King David School Foundation   "SABJE makes Bold Apology 

This is a reproduction of a letter of apology sent out by SABJE to the current parent body at King David, dealing with past abuse perpetrated by a member of staff who was employed at King David. 

Dear King David Community

The South African Board of Jewish Education is committed to providing a safe and nurturing environment which fosters the most appropriate environment for excellent education to take place. This is a responsibility which we take seriously as it underpins the key relationship that of the teacher to the student.

It was therefore with agreed sense of disbelief, pain and anger that we, the current Executive,  was made aware of the inappropriate behavior of a male staff member who worked in a senior position at King David Primary School Linksfield in the 60's, 70’s and early 80’s. Our investigations into the records and events of the time have revealed that these allegations were in fact true and were the cause of such staff member being fired.  Our efforts also revealed that no official apology was ever made at the time to those harmed by the behaviours and so we as a Board holding our fiduciary position in perpetual succession have taken it upon ourselves to do so.  We unreservedly apologise to all ex-Davidians from that era for any harm be it of a physical or emotional nature experienced under the tutelage of such a teacher and under the watch of the Board executives of the time.  Such behaviour being antithetical to what we as a school system stand for.

This process has led to much introspection and a review of related policies and practices that address the safety of all members of the King David Schools.  While we cannot change the past, the new policy implemented and the education of staff and students on this policy, we believe, will assure an ongoing safe environment.

The policy is available online at www.sabje.co.za for your perusal and all staff will be bound by the policy as part of our employee policies.  New employees will also be required to sign a behavioural code.

The King David Schools will apply a zero tolerance attitude to any such behavior and with regard to the new policy: [...]

Intimidation because of publicizing abuse causes Zephaniah Waks to leave Australia

Manny Waks reports on Facebook     I am bitterly disappointed to share that due to the ongoing harassment, intimidation and discrimination from leaders and members of the Yeshivah Centre, which has effectively led to my parents’ excommunication from their community of almost 30 years (carried out by Yeshivah leaders and most of its members), my parents (Zephaniah and Chaya Waks) have made the difficult decision to sell their family home and relocate. My parents will now spend half of the year in Israel, and as they own a wig business in Melbourne (http://www.wakswigs.com.au/), they will live in an apartment near their shop (located some distance away from the Yeshivah community) for the periods they will be in Australia.

Their home, my childhood home, was officially put on the market yesterday.

It is a sad day when the bullies, especially those cloaked in religion, have had such a major impact as to force a family to leave their home. However, thankfully my parents have not given up the fight and they will continue to be vocal about the issue of child sexual abuse. Importantly, they will continue to hold the Yeshivah Centre to full account in any way they can, including through the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

After years of service to the Yeshivah community (e.g. my mother was President of N’shei Chabad “Women of Chabad” for a few years and my parents regularly hosted countless people for the Sabbath and Jewish holidays), less than a handful of community members have stood by them. This is an indictment of the Yeshivah/Chabad community.

But then again, I guess my parents’ farewell is as bright as their welcome was to the Yeshivah community some 30 years ago. It commenced with racist taunts and violence (as per yesterday's Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/manny.waks/posts/624180104291661), and is concluding with bullying and excommunication. Sadly, the modus operandi of the Yeshivah community and its leaders seems to have remained unchanged in at least three decades.

But they will need to answer for this – to their conscience, the community, and ultimately, when they meet their Creator.

I have no doubt that justice will prevail.